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Monday, 4 November 2013

Euro-Realism: For a Better Life?

Ledbury,
England. 4 November.“Britain is a
shining apple…with a rotten core”, the damning verdict of a cousin of a bright,
decent Sri Lankan IT student murdered last week in my home town Sheffield.In the Saharan desert almost one hundred
migrants died of thirst and hunger making their desperate but illegal way from
Niger to Europe.To what extent can
society cope with large numbers of people from very different cultures and with
very different values before that host society is profoundly damaged?And, what can be done to stop human
trafficking that is doing so much damage to both immigrants and target
communities?

Like most
Europeans the sight of bodies floating in the Mediterranean or wasting in the
Sahara Desert fills me with horror.My innate
humanity wants to reach out and help.
Indeed, like many Europeans I face a daily battle between my humanity and my intellect over immigration. These sad people are just a tragic few of the 80,000 or so that the EU
borders agency Frontex claim are trying or have tried to enter Europe illegally
this year.

In Rome last
week I saw the impact of illegal immigration on Italian society – crime,
misery, poverty and exploitation.80,000
over ten years becomes 800,000 very close to the 860,000 illegal immigrants the
British Government admitted last week were living in the UK, a complete
collapse of border controls.The
Economist also suggested this week that the foreign born population of England
will be 25% by 2015. Moreover, the self-same European
societies that are mired in debt and youth unemployment are struggling to cope
with inner-EU migration from Europe’s poor to Europe’s formerly rich.Another wave is predicated in January as
Bulgarians and Romanians have the right to move west.

One of the
most pervasive false mantras of the liberal left is the idea that diversity increases
societal strength.It is utter
nonsense.Yes, at some level societies are
enriched by a controlled level of immigration and the diversity it
generates.However, the sheer scale of
immigration over the past decade, the importation of intolerance and
traumatised peoples from the world’s most damaged societies, allied to society
destroying, ghetto-building multiculturalism has left too many British and other European cities too often
microcosms of the broken places that surround Europe – including my beloved Sheffield.

For many
years dissent has been crushed by suggesting any criticism was
racism.Slowly reasoned voices are
emerging that suggests popular concern about the impact of hyper-immigration on
social cohesion must now be confronted. This argument is even backed up by several reports from the
Left - the main sponsors of hyper-immigration.Sadly it may all be too little, too late.

How has
this happened and what must be done?Take Sheffield.When I was a kid
Sheffield’s permanently-embedded Labour politicians were part of Sheffield’s
common sense, working class community.That is very much my own heritage and was informed by a pragmatic sense
of politics and its application.Today
too many politicians come from the theoretical university-educated left and
right for whom politics is simply an extension of the unworldly politics of the
campus. For them society is simply a never-ending social experiment rather than
real people trying to cope with the real world.

During the
Blair/Brown years such ‘experimentation’ led to a series of dangerous nonsenses
such as the sending of British troops to Afghanistan to keep Islamism at “strategic
distance” whilst simultaneously importing Islamism into Britain in significant numbers. Just yesterday another Islamist on a terror watch-list absconded. Today, Washington regards Britain as one of
the main source of Islamist threat to the US.The EU and its ivory tower demand for uncontrolled borders has only made
matters worse.

Consequently,
the breakdown between what are now euphemistically called ‘traditional
communities’ and politicians who do not have to live with the consequences of
their social and political experiments has proved disastrous across
Europe.It is a gap that is widening as
the space between the European elite and the European street yawns.

Hard though
it may seem there is simply no way Europe can afford to lessen controls over
immigration.These brave, sad, tragic
people are simply the harbinger of many millions who would seek to move to
Europe from its fractured and broken periphery if the door was truly opened.Therefore the most compassionate act would be
for Europe to re-exert control over such migrations.

First and
foremost that means reducing the false pull factors that make people believe
they will have a better life in Europe.It
also means rolling back the pipelines of misery that lead to such tragedies by breaking
up the criminal networks that traffic people and investing in properly secure borders.Above all it means trying to alleviate the suffering around Europe’s
borders that move people to make such dangerous journeys.That means applied aid and development.

Given the
scale of disorder and disaster around Europe’s borders and beyond to expose
already vulnerable European societies further to the population flows of misery
would to be to destroy the very societies migrants seek to enter.

For a
better life?Britain like much of the
rest of Europe is indeed a shining apple with a rotten core as too many decent, desperate people are discovering to their cost.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.